Colette on beauty

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats1795–1821Ode on a Grecian Urn, Stanza 5. The final lines of this poem have been rendered in various ways in different editions, some placing the entire last two lines within quotation marks, others only the statement “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” …In context

• Truth & Lies

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller1880–1968Letter to Rev. Phillips Brooks (8 June 1891)

It is hard, if not impossible, to snub a beautiful woman⁠—they remain beautiful and the rebuke recoils.

Winston Churchill1874–1965

• Women